


It Reads Your Insides

by blithelybonny



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gore, Insanity, M/M, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:15:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3789514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithelybonny/pseuds/blithelybonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It always brings what’s <i>required</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Reads Your Insides

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Prompt #92 Room of Requirement gone dark: Instead of what you most urgently need, it gives you your most dreaded fear.
> 
> This piece contains brief allusions to _The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock_ by T.S. Eliot, _The Second Coming_ by W.B. Yeats and _Hamlet_ by William Shakespeare.

The door flickers once, twice, fades out and suddenly reappears, as solid and sturdy as it once had been. Draco presses a palm to it trying to feel for the heat, for the raging firestorm he’s knows remains blazing on the other side, but the wood feels cool to the touch. _Fiendfyre_ might die out after a while if there’s no more oxygen, no more humanity to keep it going. Vince is dead, therefore not breathing, and no one else has visited the room since the fiery flight. No one else has been there because it’s Draco’s space after all and only Draco is allowed to be there.

His wand thrums in his hand, and he can feel Potter behind him. Always Potter, always behind him. Doesn’t he trust Draco? Doesn’t he know that Draco’s harmless? Draco wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless that fly tried to kill his mother. But that fly didn’t do anything, did it? 

“Malfoy,” calls Potter from the shadows. The suits of armor all fell down during the Battle and they’re blocking the torchlight, making the shadows stretch across the hallway. 

Draco turns, hand on the doorknob and wand pointed out. “Go back home, little grim. You can’t kill dead things. Dead things are already dead...” he trails off and turns back to the door. He’s going to go inside the Room of Hidden Things, where he’ll find the thing he’s hidden away so that no one else can see.

“Malfoy, it’s me.” Potter looms out of the shadows and steals across the hallway with a long smooth stride. He’s a graceful little grim. “Malfoy, don’t go in there please. It’s not safe.”

“What do you know of safe? You know how to save, but you don’t know safe. You’re a Gryffindor grim,” Draco responds, as he turns the knob and steps inside the Room where the women come and go, talking of-- talking of-- he cannot recall what they’re talking of, but it’s important. It’s important to remember.

Potter’s hand is in his, pulling him back from the door, but Draco is much stronger than Gryffindor grims are. He tugs back and grins when Potter falls into his arms. Draco catches him and holds him close, and he shuts the door behind them both. Into the Room where there might be an elephant of fire. Where there might be tigers and bears and phoenixes and dragons and devils of fire.

The Room of Hidden Things is dark as pitch. It’s never had two souls at once before. Draco grins in the darkness and wraps his arms tighter around the squirmy-wormy grimmy-wimmy Potter. “Shut up, Potter, Vince is going to come soon. He’ll bring the light,” Draco whispers.

“Malfoy, please, we can’t be in here anymore. It’s not safe!” Potter tries to escape, but Draco holds fast. He squeezes gently, then slides his hands down and cups Potter’s bum. He squeezes that too, and Potter moans like a wanton thing. “Oh, oh, Draco, yesssssssss.” He hisses a snakey sound. Parsel-Potter, the snakey thing.

Oh.

 _Oh no_.

Draco whines, high and tight. “Lalalalalalalalalalalalala,” he sings, and stuffs his fingers into his ears to change his mind. He doesn’t want a snake. He doesn’t want a snake to come and eat them up in the Room. He doesn’t want the Room to bring a snake, not today and not ever. Vince will bring the light instead, like he’s supposed to do. Vince always brings the light-- he has to bring the light-- he can’t not bring the light-- it isn’t fair if he doesn’t--

“MALFOY!” Potter yells and grips Draco’s wrists. He wrenches Draco’s hands down from his ears, and it _hurts_ , but Potter doesn’t care because Potter’s a selfish rude grim, and Vince is going to bring the light and blind Potter’s eyes. He’s going to take Potter’s dumb glasses and stomp them and bring the light to blind him.

“DON’T LET IT READ YOU, OR THE SNAKE WILL COME!” Draco shouts, as he wrests his hands away from Potter.

The Room knows. Oh, the Room, it knows. It knows what’s to come and it’s going to bring-- 

“It reads your insides, grim. It reads your insides until it knows and it brings you the thing you want the most.” Draco draws back his hand and slaps Potter across the face, quick, again, three times, faster and faster, he slaps at the grim until it catches his hands again. It growls like a beastie thing and pushes back and back until Draco is pressed against the exposed brick. It pushes Draco’s hands up and pins them against the brick, and it leans in and bites off Draco’s lips. It chews them up and spits them back out so they are back on Draco’s face. Draco licks his lips to taste the bloody, spitty taste. “It reads all your insides, grim,” he reminds it.

“Malfoy, please, please, we cannot be here. It’s not safe here, and I need to get you out before it…” Potter trails off and turns around.

“It’s too late, Potter,” Draco says, shaking his head sadly. “It’s too too late. The Room...it reads all your insides and it brings you the thing you want the most.”

“I don’t...I don’t want that,” Potter says. So silly, Potter is. So silly to think that the Room won’t bring him what his insides want. The Room is the Room of Hidden Things, but it’s also the Room of Requirement where the Army was built and the kids play war and make shiny Patronuses whenever they’re scared. The Room always brings the things that are _required_.

The Room brings Potter when Draco requires him, doesn’t it? Potter is here because the Room requires him-- requires the grim --him, the grim, him, the grim, him, the grim.

“Malfoy, please, it’s not too late, we have to get out of here now. I’m begging you, please, just move, just let go, just move, we have to get out, we have to leave--”

“--fly me out, Potter!” Draco interrupts, with glee. “Fly me out on your Fiery Bolt! You can fly through the fire, you can fly away from dragons and monsters and fires, you can always _fly_ \--”

“--SHUT UP!”

So rude, Potter is. So rude with his grassy-green eyes behind his frames, so big and so wide and so wet. So much crying. Vince will bring the light to burn up the the tears and blind those grassy-green eyes.

“Fuck, Malfoy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he hushes and gathers Draco up and holds him close. He pets Draco’s hair and buries his face in Draco’s neck. Now Draco’s neck is wet, and so are his cheeks. And his eyelashes are sticking together, and it’s still coming. It’s still coming closer and closer.

“Vince?” Draco calls, as he shoves Potter away. “Vince, are you there? Come out and bring the light! You promised! YOU PROMISED TO BRING THE LIGHT, YOU ALWAYS BRING THE LIGHT YOU PROMISED YOUPROMISEYOUPROMISEYOUPROMISE...”

His shouts echo around the empty Room. The darkness is so loud.

“Malfoy, it’s time to leave now. Crabbe isn’t coming,” Potter says quietly, so quietly, like he’s afraid. How ridiculous to be afraid of dead things. Dead things are dead and can’t hurt anything.

Snakes are dead. Draco knows snakes are dead. He’s not afraid of dead snakes that are dead.

It’s gone. It’s stopped. It’s dead.

Potter looks up, his mouth drops open in a question, but he doesn’t ask it. Potter never knows the right questions to ask.

Vince is going to bring the light like he always does. Draco grins.

“Oh God,” Potter says, his hands at his sides.

His wand drops from his fingers, and Draco bends to scoop it up. It thrums in his hand and his own wand does too. They’re twined, these wands, these hands. They’re one, these wands.

Potter uses whatever wand he likes and they always work so well. They always work like they belong to him. Potter must own many wands. Potter must own all the magic.

Except the magic that Vince has. Only Vince has the light magic.

“Did you bring the light?” Draco asks, as Vince walks up. Vince’s eyes are pale and wide, and his lips are grinning. His teeth are smoke-stained and falling out, and his skin drips from his face like water. Pieces come off with every step, shuffling loose his mortal coil, slouching toward Bethlehem.

“Of course I brought the light,” Vince answers, and his eyeball falls out of its socket.

Draco steps on it, hears it squish beneath his shoe and looks back up. “Show Potter. Show Potter the light, please,” he requests. Such a reasonable request. He looks at Potter, whose grassy-green eyes are flinty and wet from crying. It’s time to blind them so Potter can’t see anymore, can’t cry anymore. No more tears belong here. The Room is a place where it’s safe, and Potter must learn how to be safe instead of how to save, to always save those who need saving.

“Oh God,” Potter says again. He cannot move his hands.

Draco slides up behind him and wraps his arms around Potter’s waist. Potter shivers from head to toe, and Draco grins. “Don’t be scared, grim. You’re supposed to be the scary one.”

“Draco, this...oh God.” It’s all Potter can say. Grims must not have very large vocabularies. They don’t need them, Draco supposes. They scare with just their eyes and their souls.

“Vince, please, can you show Potter the light? Just like you always do,” Draco asks, as he slides his hands into Potter’s waistband. Potter’s skin is slick and salty. His hair is coarse against Draco’s fingertips. Potter hisses again, the snakey thing.

Vince turns slowly to them both and holds out his bones. His wand is a charred stick, and his bones cannot grasp it properly, but he doesn’t need to be perfect. The Room helps him. The Room always provides what’s required. 

“Crabbe, no!” Potter shouts, as Vince opens his maw and cries out the curse.

The chimaeras and dragons and gryphons and elephants surge out, so bright, so hot and bright and loud, and Draco can hear Potter screaming something in his ear, tugging him away from the brightness.

“C’mon, Potter!” Draco shouts with glee, as he takes Potter’s wrists and whirls him about the Room. “It’s time to fly out! It’s time to be saved. This is the part where you save us!”

Potter Summons his broom from the Room of Hidden Things and it whistles through the raging air to hover in front of them like a hovering thing. Like a craft. Like where the aliens come from when they come. He clambers on and it bucks him off. No safety, no saving, no nothing today.

“Draco, hold on!” Potter cries, and wraps Draco’s arms around his waist.

The wood is hard and firm between his thighs. It’s hot and hard, and Potter’s an animal with big black paws, puppy paws he hasn’t grown into yet. They paw off Draco’s robes. Potter nips Draco’s jaw and licks his ear. He sucks the lobe into his mouth, and Draco ruffles his furry head. “Such a good boy, such a good grim,” he says, as Potter wriggles against him, excited and scared.

Up they fly, up out of the smoke. It chokes him. It fills his lungs the higher they fly, and he can see Vince down below, smiling so bright, as bright as the light he always brings. Such a friend, he is, such a very good friend to bring the light to blind Potter’s eyes and stop the crying.

The Room always knows to bring Vince. The Room always reads his insides right.

 

The door opens, and Draco and Potter step out into the hallway. Draco closes his eyes, inhales deeply and, as he exhales, counts down _five, four, three, two, one_.

He opens his eyes. Potter takes his hand. Together they walk away, and Draco doesn’t look back.

Not today...

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment here or at [Livejournal](http://hp-darkarts.livejournal.com/114476.html)


End file.
